A PORTFOLIO ON POETIC BLACK RESILIENCY
Tracie Morris | Introduction
Joanne V. Gabbin | Black Stone
Lois Elaine Griffith | El Cazador / The Hunter
Yona Harvey | The Presence of Order| Once Upon a Time in a Galaxy Far, Far Astray
Nathaniel Mackey | Crosscut Bird Sanctuary
Shelagh Wilson Patterson | A Danger with Portals
Douglas Kearney | “Bout a Thing Bout” (House: Codpiece) | “It Can Help You Get Low” (Gospel: Poleyn)
Steve Cannon | Untitled (“Meditation on Miles”)
Harryette Mullen | Our Song of Love | Departed
Asiya Wadud | my mind makes for me a window then a door
Janice A. Lowe | Overlook BHM
Yolanda Wisher | Maple Street Rag | Song of the Sandblaster | yvonda remembers the century house | spell #45
Delali Ayivor | I, unsubstantial | Feeling Pretty Successful
Duriel E. Harris | Dream in Wartime: How We Get Free: Listen Love I & I Life & O Feel It
Terrance Hayes | The Kafka Virus vs (Thursday)
Jo Stewart | Excerpt from Un-| Excerpt from Un-
Tracie Morris | 2016 Requiescat Breaks
POETRY
Maria Zoccola | red rover
Brian Simoneau | The Man Who Counted His Chickens | The Man Who Brought a Knife to a Gunfight
Sara Elkamel | Friday Market
Susan Leslie Moore | Prosperity
Mariano Zaro, translated by Blas Falconer | excerpts from Father Earth: A Poem in 40 Parts
Alice Turski | Labors of Translation
Jared Joseph | Atmosphere
Kevin Norwood | Harvesting the Mountain
Daniel Barnum | Defending Champion; or, In His Harte, Sir Palomydes Wysshed That wyth His Worshyp He Myght Have Ado wyth Sir Trystram Before All Men
Colin Kostelecky | Sic: A Palindrome Series
NONFICTION
Steffan Triplett | Inclemency
Liza Cochran |Mother Moose
Julia LoFaso | Displacement
FICTION
Dessa|As Close As You Get
Danica Li |My Brother William
Aleyna Rentz | The Glenn Gould Memorial Museum
Marian Crotty | What Kind of Person
Su Tong, translated by Ting Wang | Shanglong Temple
Daisy Hernández | Soursop
Kirsten Vail Aguilar | Rot
Jackson Saul | Soon Right Away
ARTWORK
Tim Fielder | LightBridge: A Portal between Embodied Minds and Souls
Editors’ Note
You Breathed on Me
The title of this editor’s note has been floating around in my head for the last couple of months—really, the past two years. Nothing further—just that phrase, that accusation. Words have been failing me.
It seems I can’t stop ruminating on the new fraught way we understand the breath now, mid-pandemic. The way I, as a parent, turn my head when my child’s face is too close to mine. One breath could potentially kill. Our intimacy, our joy, is our danger.
The breath, recategorized as a contagion, a touch between immune systems, an unwelcome one.
The breath, which fails when one has Covid.
The breath, extinguished in police killings of Black men, women, and children. “I can’t breathe”—words that will haunt any consideration of breath from now until the end of language.
The breath of my own voice, so hard to access at times. The fear, the sorrow that catch in my throat.
But, the breath of citizens speaking out in protest.
The breath of my children, post-vaccination, their faces held up to my face in the morning as they head to in-person school.
And in Tracie Morris’s introduction to her brilliantly curated portfolio on poetic Black resiliency, she speaks of “the breath through the lines.” Thanks to her, I see breath in the written word.
Resilience is an act of continuing to breathe, to speak, to even speak of joy. My gratitude goes out to Professor Morris and the poetry luminaries she has assembled, and to all the writers who keep writing, whether published here or not.
We share the breath’s fragility. If it falters for one, it falters for all. But with it, we give each other life.
Keep breathing.
Lynne Nugent
